For some, the high-speed wheels grind slow

A portion of Lynn Township has no cable and little access to high-speed Internet

Patrick Sutton, who lives in a remote part of Lehigh County, trying to get… (MICHAEL KUBEL, THE MORNING…)

December 11, 2012|Daniel Patrick Sheehan | In The Burbs

One of the sad, untold stories about the imminent end of the world is that Patrick Sutton and his neighbors will meet their doom without ever having enjoyed cable television and high-speed Internet in the comfort of their own homes.

I kid, of course. Sutton, for one, is signed up for a wireless hotspot, which gives him Internet speeds that are at least better than dial-up, unless a lot of other people are tapping into the hotspot at the same time.

Oh, and the world isn't really going to end on Dec. 21, as many people maintain based on their reading of the expiring calendar of the ancient Mayans. I am planning to write a crackerjack story on that topic for next week, so be sure to read it to find out what's really going to happen that day.

Anyway, back to Sutton. He lives in a section of Lynn Township that is, by my estimate, some 40 or 50 years behind the times, because there is no cable there.

Sutton started a petition to get cable and posted it in the New Tripoli Post Office, where one of my bosses saw it. Until then, neither she nor I nor anyone else around here imagined there were places in the United States without cable, unless it was by choice, like in UFO cult compounds.

"Our house is right off Golden Key Road, and most of Golden Key has no cable," Sutton told me the other day.

It's not such a big deal as far as television is concerned. Sutton and other residents have satellite TV, which is every bit as good as cable, except during massive solar storms. And you never know when one of those will break out.

The Internet is another matter. They can't get cable Internet and are situated too far from a telephone company switching station to acquire a digital subscriber line, or DSL, which is another high-speed option.

"We have a Sprint mobile hotspot, but it's slow," said Sutton, who teaches algebra and geometry in the Pen Argyl School District. "Basically it's like using a cell phone for the Internet. It's $50 a month for a 6-gigabyte plan, which you use up very quickly. The 12-gigabyte plan is $80 a month, and at that price it's an outrage."

Sutton called Blue Ridge Communications, the cable company serving the area, and they sent him some paperwork, which he took around the neighborhood. Ten people signed, but that was short of the company's threshold to pay for the work itself, meaning the residents would have to pay. And the estimate was in the $21,000 range, which of course worked out to more than $2,000 per household.

Ugh. Poking around online (slowly) Sutton discovered something he had never heard of — the Bona Fide Retail Request program, or BFRR. It's part of a 2004 Pennsylvania law requiring Verizon and other telephone companies to provide high-speed Internet access to customers by the end of 2015.

So Sutton took his case to Verizon. The company's own website provides the particulars of what the law requires: If customer demand reaches a certain threshold, the work will be done in a year. If not, the company will continue on the 2015 timetable.

At this point, Sutton has learned his neighborhood is on a two-year timeline because it will require significant construction to bring the service. He is working with the state Department of Community and Economic Development in hopes of getting the job done sooner.

In any case, Sutton wanted other people in similar situations to know about BFRR, which could get high-speed Internet to the neighborhood more quickly.

•In 2011 I wrote a story about an Allentown couple, Charles and Betty Higgins, who had suffered a terrible loss: the death of their daughter, Jenna.

She contracted bacterial meningitis while studying for her doctorate in archaeology at the University of Sheffield in England, and died before her parents could reach her bedside. In keeping with their daughter's wishes, Charles and Betty told doctors to harvest her organs, which were used in transplants that saved four lives.

This week, Charles and Betty got some cheering news. Through the Institute of European Archaeology, their daughter's friends and colleagues have published a book called "Archaeology, Peoples and Landscapes: Essays in Honor of Jenna Higgins."

It includes, among other works, Jenna's master's thesis on European megaliths. The cover art is a lovely watercolor of Jenna at a dig in Ireland.

Proceeds from the book will go to the scholarship fund Jenna's parents started in her memory: Jenna's Fund. It is just over $73,000 and Charles and Betty want to reach $100,000 within the next two years.

The book, edited by Thomas Finan, should be available through Amazon in coming weeks.